Diverse Targets For Warehouse Cost Reduction
I recently took a step back and tried to determine what type of company would use our warehouse consulting services. We try to help businesses with their warehousing needs by providing a variety of consulting services. Our goal is to help businesses cope with these challenging economic times by making recommendations for controlling their operating costs. My focus was on developing a list of potential businesses that might need assistance. In the past, our client base consisted of the companies you would traditionally think of as direct to customer and business to business entities. I thought a good place to start would be to research recent past warehousing clients.
A sample of the large variety of recent businesses that used us to help in their warehouse operation or requested information on our consulting service offerings looks like this:
- One of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies used us to help strategize on the fulfillment of their sales and collateral materials.
- A government- run laboratory that manages the operation of a particle accelerator needed help organizing their five storage facilities and the storage of parts and equipment used in experiments and maintaining their accelerator.
- A restaurant supply company that manufactured, among other things, pizza trays and dish covers wanted assistance in refining their fulfillment operation.
- A manufacturer/packager of nuts is looking for a way to increase storage capacity.
- A large state-run university is looking for help in consolidating their storage facilities.
- A campus and online medical college needed assistance in finding an outsourced partner to fulfill orders for textbooks for correspondence courses.
- A regional hospital is redefining the use of their warehouse and is looking for layout help.
- A large third party logistics company is looking for “best practice” implementation in their warehouses supplying “Just In Time” computer components.
- A multichannel company providing supplies to the pet industry and groomers is moving to a larger facility.
- A book publisher asked for help in improving their warehouse operation and inventory control processes.
I started looking for one common denominator between all of these businesses and quickly realized what it was — that most businesses in the country have some connection to a warehousing function and overall supply chain issues. Since most of these, if not all of these, companies face similar issues; it would seem that we all need to focus on finding ways to reduce costs.
In the past, most of our emphasis to reduce supply chain costs was with those multichannel companies that we traditionally considered as “major” players with warehouse and supply chain issues. We now realize that there are a significant number of “non-traditional” businesses as well that impact or are impacted by the costs of their supply chain.
I think my takeaway from this revelation is that – if we want to help improve the supply chain in the US, as well as address the current economic issues facing businesses – F. Curtis Barry & Company needs to look at almost every company and industry in the US to see how we might increase efficiency and reduce costs in the warehouse. No matter what industry you are in, it should be in all of our best interests to look for ways to lower costs and improve service in warehousing anywhere we can.
Bob Betke is vice president of F. Curtis Barry & Company, a multichannel operations and fulfillment consulting firm with expertise in multichannel systems, warehouse, call center, inventory, and benchmarking; Learn more online at: http://www.fcbco.com
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